macProVideo "Compare 7 DAWs" Course Ad: Guess who's NOT included?

[James Steele]

So this is fun. I'm scrolling through Facebook and see a sponsored ad in my feed:

compare7daws.jpg (110.68 KiB) Viewed 3685 times

So I decide to follow the link which takes me to their website and a page about the course:

https://macprovideo.com/course/find-the ... st-for-you

Have any of you guessed where this is going? Of course you have.

Here's a portion of the synopsis:

Which DAW is best for editing? Which one has the most complete mixing plugin suite? What about mastering? And software instruments? Most importantly, which DAW has the best feature set for YOU? Will it be Avid Pro Tools, Apple's Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Reason, Steinberg's Cubase, PreSonus Studio One, or Reaper? Let's find out!

Yeah... just gotta love it. I understand that MOTU is privately held. That's good. Because if I was a shareholder I'd be wanting to know how a company that had a head start like MOTU did and once was one of the dominant platforms managed to lose so much ground?

[pencilina]

I think recommending DP to anyone at this point would be a liability. I've been using/learning Logic for the last few months. I think It's really great and (after 28 years of using DP) its been a lot easier to transition to then I imagined it would be. All my plugins work as they should and I've only experienced a couple crashes with no loss of work. Even with the task of learning Logic, It's been nice to be able to focus on my music and not troubleshooting.

[Michael Canavan]

I mean I think we all know this, DP lost massive amounts of ground when Logic was bought by Apple, at that point DP was the other Mac only DAW, Opcode Studio Vision having been destroyed by Gibson. DP also lost ground when Logic and Cubase beat it to Mac OS X. It's also arguable IMO that DP's late adoption of plugin standards was a factor, MAS never took off and DP stuck with it until the switch to OS X.

The other thing I think people miss. DAWs are more common now than 20 years ago, DP could have lost no users compared to back then, it's just that the market is bigger than it was 20 years ago, and DP has a lot of large conglomerates to compete with advertising wise.

I'm not super worried about it, MOTU are obviously interested in keeping people engaged with the webinars, but I do wish the younger generation of musicians wasn't more or less ignoring DP it seems.

[bayswater]

Don't forget the simple matter of price. I probably spent the better part of $1K for the first copy of Logic, but after Apple bought it, it cost about $200 to update, and it's been essentially free ever since. Then there's the academic price that's pretty easy to get regardless of your academic status. Even Logic 11 was a free update. That has to be a consideratrion for someone young starting out with a DAW. If you know nothing but the price, Logic is the obvious choice.

[Michael Canavan]

I think recommending DP to anyone at this point would be a liability. I've been using/learning Logic for the last few months. I think It's really great and (after 28 years of using DP) its been a lot easier to transition to then I imagined it would be. All my plugins work as they should and I've only experienced a couple crashes with no loss of work. Even with the task of learning Logic, It's been nice to be able to focus on my music and not troubleshooting.

All DAWs are meant to do the same things, MIDI and audio can only be presented in so many ways. Beyond that I respectfully disagree with your assessment. In my personal experience at 7 years using Logic, it's had some pretty rough spots at times, just like any DAW really. It literally was last year that Logic could differentiate by port MIDI streams, meaning it's been just a short while that Logic could use different controllers without you as an end user having to figure out how to assign channel 8 to x controller so it's now at DP's level that way. I really hate how it works with articulation mapping, that was one thing that drove me a bit batty messing around with it recently. I do wish DP assigned basic mappings to knobs and faders, which Logic can do, but again I really would be disappointed if MOTU went the way Logic does with it, Bitwig and Live are light years better there. Oh and Logic doesn't support Efficiency cores on the new Apple Silicon Macs, for some reason it's the only "old school" DAW that doesn't? Reaper and DP use all cores and apparently so does Cubase.

Disregarding Logics built in instruments and FX (I have 600+ plugins), I would almost definitely move to Reaper if MOTU went under, for multiple reasons. You can customize Reaper to behave like DP, it's multi instrument support is far better than any DAW, it's super stable, supports AU, VST, and the new CLAP format, has the best bounce settings of any DAW bar none, Track Assignments are what Clippings are in DP, but they don't lose output assignments and don't need you to import Bundles etc. It's much easier to deal with that what Logic does that way. The downside to Reaper is it's so extensible that articulation mapping and Clips like Live are Lua scripts so not as thought out as DP or Logic. Plus it gets no love from other developers. This means there's no Babylon Waves articulation sets for Reaper and no support for the Slate Raven touch screen etc.

[stubbsonic]

Yea, though I've had my complaints over the years, I'm still a proud DP user. I've tried Logic enough times to know that it doesn't work they way I need it to. I actually found Logic pretty insufferable to learn & use, though I do like the plugins. That's why MainStage was a no-brainer.

I can see how there does need to be a "culture" around a successful DAW that helps to promote and sustain it.

MOTU does seem to work pretty hard at maintaining DP, but I have to imagine that is a difficult gig, chasing such frequent OS updates, etc.

It is frustrating that DP wasn't included in that DAW shootout, not because of any failures on the part of MOTU, but just that regardless of it's SOLID feature set, it has been largely ignored. It is venerated by a small circle of power users and film composers; so I think it at least continues to deserve a seat at the table. And comparing DP's features and workflow to those other DAWs would have added a nice dimension to that video (not that I watched it).

In a recent video, some dude off-handedly said my favorite synth company was "Exiting the pro market"-- he opined about how other manufacturers hadn't released pro products in many years, but this company got this pronouncement-- which he unrelentingly defended in the comments. I bring it up because content creators love to spew click-bait and make doomy statements for all their reasons-- and it's up to companies to claw back the subtle reputational damage.

I NEED for DP to work and carry on, and I feel some concern that criticisms of a struggling company should at least be fair. We've seen some good developers close up shop, and that thought is scary to me. I will run DP for as long as I can. Having it continue to be robust would be icing.

[Michael Canavan]

[edit] Prefacing this with the observation that DP12 is past due and these types of conversations have happened with DP before, and any DAW I've ever used when an upgrade is near, I'm even seeing this with the imminent release of Slate Rave 4.0 for DP! [/edit]

I will say that the one area where DP is IMO behind the others is user interface issues. Every DAW that's more than 20 years old has some odd parts but DP has amassed quite a lot. It's my biggest wish

Looking at DP as a new user you're confronted with things that don't really make any sense. The Song window is pretty much not used by any users these days, virtual instruments can't use track/plugin automation in V-Racks, Clips can't be edited in the Drum editor, Clips are the way to loop MIDI or audio and you can't drag the end to loop them in the Tracks window. The Clips window itself is a completely different size than the rest of DP's GUI, it's awkward and tracks aren't resizable, Saved VI setups as Clippings like multi out instruments with aux's and track colors and names do not save their bundle assignments so you have to import the bundle or it doesn't work, they also don't save their output settings in general. Importing a Bundle with the same named main output like Main L R means that you will likely forget about the fact DP can't assign outputs and wonder why the metronome doesn't work. The Content Browser shows you presets for MOTUs FX and instruments but doesn't let you do anything with them? Also the preview volume fader for various things like the Content Browser and Soundbites etc. isn't accessible in those windows, it's in the Preferences window. MAS plugins are not resizable, making things like MX4 almost unusable these days.

Essentially there are multiple areas of DP that need attention, and DAWs in general spend so much of their energy chasing the latest greatest thing, and not enough enhancing and fixing their "legacy" features.

Anway when's DP12 dropping?

[stubbsonic]

That's a pretty nice overview, MC. Nice to read. Thanks.

[mikehalloran]

Stop me if you've heard this before: Apple uses inexpensive and free apps to sell Apple products.

Although Logic is anything but logical, it has something that other inexpensive DAWs don't and that is telephone support. They don't advertise this but it does.

Not everything in that course does as we know.

This info is dated as it's released. Major changes are going on at AVID as the company tightens its belt with Sibelius personnel changes announced today.

Expect Audacity to become a major player in the coming year or two. Before Ultimate Guitar changed their name to Muse Group (UG is now a subsidiary), they were worth an estimated $8B. Audacity and MuseScore are part of a major development effort with an army of programmers and AI engineers working on them. Both will remain free but it's all part of Cyprus based, Russian backed Muse Group's plan to dominate the global music industry. Publishing and licensing are where the really big $$$s are and the 10-figure acquisition of Hal Leonard 13 months ago was the opening shot.

[stubbsonic]

[James Steele]

Well, I'm gonna try to do this with voice dictation (and subsequent manual cleanup) because there's a lot to say.

Anyway, first issue: nobody knows when DP 12 is going to drop. It's been a long time and its release won't necessarily have to coincide with NAMM because, after all, MOTU is skipping out on NAMM again this year. I understand the financial reasons for it, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Yeah... I could try and rationalize it, but when I see smaller plugin developers showing up, I wonder why they still do it. I suppose *skipping* looks better than *downsizing*?

I don't think I need to state my credentials as somebody who for decades has championed Digital Performer and advocated for it. This site is a testament to that. I practically went to war decades ago when SOS dropped "Performer Notes" to make room for a regular Reaper column. Looks like SOS knew something we didnt.

We all know what it's like to be "rooting for the underdog." It does get discouraging. Fortunately, for MOTU, it has a user base that is out there trying to pick up the slack and get the word out, even when MOTU seems to sort of trip over its own feet. Just one example… It would just be so easy for MOTU not to take down the YouTube videos of the webinars. Yet it's my understanding, that MOTU takes them down. There is very little on YouTube about Digital Performer as it is. By contrast, I'm having to dabble in ProTools a little bit these days, and just last night I stumbled upon a whole bunch of beginner tutorials that were very helpful. Avid has their own out, but there is also a large user base posting similar material. Same with all the other DAWs.

I'm not trying to be a downer here. In fact, recently I've been thinking of setting up a new area of this board for user advocacy. What I mean is, every time I see a YouTube video that solicits response from DAW users regarding which DAW they prefer, I'd post a topic linking to that video so we could remind people that we are here! DP users do exist! We are the Great White Buffalo! Because, as you can imagine, DP users are seldom represented in the responses. Again, unfortunately, it seems like this is another example of the user base trying to pick up the slack for MOTU. Again, just visit their official YouTube channel. The last video (about CueMix) was uploaded 10 months ago. I would suggest they need to hire a full-time social media person. Either that or find an influencer like Cubase has Dom Sigales (sp?) who regularly posts Cubase related content.

I have no inside information as to what is going on within MOTU, but as I've said, it's not exactly inspiring confidence. Nonetheless, I will likely proceed with the idea above. For example, here's a recent video I watched where a couple of DP users piped up in the comments. Maybe some of us could make our presence known. Again, just another example of users, as unpaid advocates, trying to do make our platform seen when it feels like MOTU itself could be doing more online.

I know it must be shocking to some, that now I am appearing to be a MOTU detractor. I am not. I love Digital Performer. Rather I'm an extremely frustrated user. From what you see online and especially YouTube (which for better or worse is important. Maybe more so since MOTU skips NAMM these days), DP seems almost irrelevant and missing from the discussion. Most plug-in developers don't test on it, and I suspect they don't really care if a plug-in works in DP or not. Or if they get a report of a problem, it's not going to be as high a priority to fix it as it would with other more popular DAWs.

It just occurred to me that the semi-pro market seems to be abandoning Pro Tools due to the subscription model, or the cost to maintain "support" if you have a perpetual license. In some ways, DP is very similar to PT. Might be a prime opportunity to go after those folks. Yet DP isn't mentioned or on the radar for most of them. Same with Studio One where they've implemented some new sort of support scheme. Go after those folks perhaps? Dunno.

Really, the main issue I was pondering when I made this post is how a company like MOTU, having had what seems to have been a huge head start on the competition, has lost so much ground over the years? And I think it's not just about Logic and Apple. There have been upstart DAWs that have only come up in recent years that have also eclipsed Digital Performer in terms of popularity.

Also, as a Mac user, I have to wonder just how much time and money has been expended to make inroads with Windows users, and has the presumed payoff been worth it? Has overall improvement been slowed as compared to being focused on Mac? Undoubtedly there is extra tech support expense. From what I've read, that's almost standard due to Windows itself. I wonder if it would've been better to focus completely on the Mac. What do I know? Again, I'm no marketing genius, but if one stands back and looks at it objectively, MOTU seems to have squandered a pretty big head start over the competition. It's frustrating. It's tough to be out there rooting for an underdog that seems to be so far behind. It's not even mentioned most of the time by name.

That's it for now. Sigh. Keep pushing uphill I guess. Still waiting on fix for broken hardware insert support and improvements to EUCON support, whether that needs to happen on Avid's side or MOTU's.